Kitsch
Kitsch is art or other objects that appeal to popular rather than high art tastes. The word was first applied to artwork that was a response to certain divisions of 19th-century art with aesthetics that favored what later art critics would consider to be exaggerated sentimentality and melodrama. Hence, 'kitsch art' is closely associated with 'sentimental art'. Kitsch is also related to the concept of camp, because of its humorous and ironic natureWikipedia: Kitsch. Collector of Kitsch During his days at Notre Dame and later in Chicago, John Bellairs collected what was called kitsch. Robert Yaple, a fellow student at the University of Chicago, explains that such objects were not mere gaudy trash, but things upon which their creators had lavished appreciable amounts of time, energy, and expense - "and which still remained gaudy trash.Correspondence with Robert Yaple." Marilyn Fitschen says Bellairs bought whatever he could afford and friends who knew of his passion would also give him various trinkets as gifts. One item that stands out in particular for both Fitschen and Yaple was a clock Bellairs saw on display in a window in Hyde Park: a tall, painted, High Victorian cast-iron figurine of the Dickens's character Sarah Gamp holding a dog with a clock in its belly. When the clock was running, the dog's tail wagged up and down, and its tongue went in and outCorrespondence with Marilyn Fitschen.. Bellairs's ideal of style was later embodied in Prospero's house and furnishings as seen in The Face in the Frost, notably with a very similar clock. Bellairs writes about this interest shortly after beginning studies at the University of Chicago: These friends share my addiction for antiques bordering on the disgusting, and have found a name for such trash: KITCH is the official title, invented by Gilbert Highet, and includes all the curious which affronts the sensibilities of sane people. We ransack used book shops, dustbins, and push-carts, and have turned up some lovely Victorian prints, including such titles as The Young Poetess, The Poet's Vision, and The Murder of Sergeant Clough by the Maniac Frampton''Correspondence from John Bellairs to Charles Bowen (1960).. Bowen later clarified this: Kitsch was not invented by Highet but is a common German word meaning 'trash,' and is the word most frequently applied since the early 20th century to works considered pretentious and tasteless. My encyclopedia adds that a museum of kitsch was opened in Stuttgart and had John known of it he would surely have made a pilgrimage thereCorrespondence with Charles Bowen (2006).. An article later that decade noted the "elaborate descriptive household settings in [The Pedant and the Shuffly] not only come from the fertile Bellairs imagination but also from items seen at junk shops in Chicago", prompting Bellairs to add his "inventive" friends had lovingly labeled his mind as "ragbag""'Ragbag Mind' Cited As Key To Success". ''Freeport Journal Standard (Freeport, IL) (Feb, 3, 1967).. Bellairs Corpus * A statue of Fidgeta, attributed to the Catholic Casting Company of Chicago, stands in Santa Fidgeta, the church in Tormento, Italy, and reportedly squirms on the saint's feast day (''Saint Fidgeta and Other Parodies''; 12-4). * A statue of Buddha on the Cathedral of Saint Gorboduc has a clock in its belly. A lotus blossom in the statue's navel goes in and out with the ticks of the timepiece (Saint Fidgeta and Other Parodies, 34). References Category:Things